Now that Jeb Bush is totally ridiculed by both Democrats and Republicans for saying that, given what he knows now he would still invade Iraq, other Republican presidential pretenders are jumping on the bandwagon trying to distance themselves from Jeb Bush, George Bush and the whole Iraq invasion.
Enter presidential pretender, Donald Trump. Apparently, he and Preside Obama are in one accord when it comes to the Iraq invasion.
On “Fox and Friends,” co-host Steve Doocy asked Trump about reports that the Islamic State took control of Ramadi in Iraq and whether Trump would call for “boots on the ground” following ISIL’s latest attack.
“Well, I would have never been in Iraq,” Trump answered, according to a clip highlighted by Mediaite.
Co-host Elisabeth Hasselbeck later asked Trump if he thinks the U.S. should have left Iraq, given what we know now.
“We shouldn’t have been there, and once we were there, we probably should have stayed,” Trump said. “The Middle East has been totally decapitated. It’s a mess. The balance has been lost between Iraq and Iran.”
Trump then referenced Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL), who on Sunday struggled to explain whether the decision to invade Iraq was a mistake.
“These characters, like Rubio made a total fool of himself on Chris Wallace’s program, talking about ‘We’re better off without Saddam Hussein.’ Give me a break,” Trump said. “Right now we have ISIS, which is worse than Saddam Hussein. At least Saddam Hussein did one thing: he killed terrorists. He was very good at killing terrorists.”
Trump noted that Hussein did not have weapons of mass destruction.
“We had very bad intelligence. He had none,” he said.
Why is this important? Because 2016 is shaping up to be a foreign policy election. Yes, there will be talk about taxing the wealthy, cutting taxes to the wealthy, what to do about entitlements and the middle class, abortion, immigration and health care, but right now, the world seems to be blowing up and countries are looking to the United States to help fix what ails them.
President Obama has wisely not gotten us involved in a foreign adventure despite calls by the hawkish neocon crowd over on the right to send troops to Syria. And Lebanon. And Iraq. And other places. Which sounds like the good-old-fashioned response that George W. Bush followed and that was a terrible mistake. And it all sounds heroic and noble until the body bags start coming back and the soldiers return with severe damage to their bodies and minds.
What 2016 presents for the country is an opportunity to be creative with our foreign policy. The Cold War has been over for more than 20 years, but the mentality remains, this time with China as the Soviets and North Korea as the Cubans. ISIS is a tremendous threat to Middle East stability, but they are alienating other countries in the region, who are showing more of a propensity to fight on their own. We can support our friends, but right now there is little reason for us to get more soldiers involved.
It will be interesting to see where the debate goes from here. Rand Paul has been championing a more isolationist foreign policy as a basic belief. Hillary Clinton certainly has the experience, but she hasn’t enunciated a specific policy yet. Can Mike Huckabee, Carly Fiorina, Rick Perry, Martin O’Malley and Bernie Sanders come up with credible ideas? Perhaps, but I’ve come to a conclusion that’s even more true now than it was in 2004.
We should have elected John Kerry as president when we had the chance.
The First Lady made a very powerful speech at the 2015 Tuskegee Commencement speech. A speech that caused much headaches for Republican talking heads like Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck, and for that reason alone, you owe it to yourself to watch the speech in its entirety.
Another win for America. Another win for the president many Republicans say is “soft on terrorism.”
Islamic State senior commander, Abu Sayyaf, was killed and his wife captured in Syria during a raid by U.S. Special Forces, Defense Secretary Ashton Carter said.
The operation in eastern Syria was authorized by President Barack Obama, according to a statement from Carter. He said Abu Sayyaf helped direct Islamic State’s oil, gas and financial operations and that his wife, Umm Sayyaf, was suspected of involvement in the militant group’s activities.
The raid comes after Obama’s meeting at the presidential retreat at Camp David with leaders of the six-nation Gulf Cooperation Council, which has expressed concerns about the president’s policies in Syria and Iraq.
“The operation represents another significant blow to ISIL, and it is a reminder that the United States will never waver in denying safe haven to terrorists who threaten our citizens, and those of our friends and allies,” Carter said, using an alternative term for Islamic State.
Abu Sayyaf was killed when he engaged U.S. forces, none of whom were killed or injured, according to the statements from Carter and Bernadette Meehan, a spokeswoman for the White House’s National Security Council. Umm Sayyaf is being held by the U.S. military in Iraq, Meehan said.
We lost another legend. BB King, the man most people think about when they think of blues, died on Thursday. He was 89 years old.
His daughter, Patty King, said he died in Las Vegas, where he announced two weeks ago that he was in home hospice care after suffering from dehydration.
The Mississippi native’s reign as “king of the blues” lasted more than six decades and straddled two centuries, influencing a generation of rock and blues musicians, from Eric Clapton and Stevie Ray Vaughan to Sheryl Crow and John Mayer.
His life was the subject of the documentary “B.B. King: The Life of Riley” and the inspiration for the the B.B. King Museum and Delta Interpretive Center, which opened in Mississippi in 2008.
King’s enduring legacy came from his refusal to slow down even after cementing his status as an American music icon.
Even with a long list of honors to his name — a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award, Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction, a Presidential Medal of Freedom — he maintained a relentless touring schedule well into his 80s.
Throughout his career, King evolved with the times to incorporate contemporary trends and influences without straying from his Delta blues roots. Whether he was sharing the stage with U2 on “When Loves Comes to Town” — a scene memorialized in the 1988 concert film “Rattle and Hum” — or playing in the East Room of the White House with Buddy Guy, Mick Jagger, Jeff Beck and others, King’s single-string guitar notes trilled with an unmistakable vibrato from his hollow-bodied Gibson affectionately known as Lucille.
Recently, President Obama called out Fox News for unfairly criticizing the poor and for classifying them as lazy people who leash off the government.
In response, Fox News proved the president right by classifying poor people – many of them watch Fox News by the way – as lazy and telling them to “get a job!”
I’m always amazed when rich folks look down on the poor folks who keep the rich folks rich.
New Jersey Governor Chris Christie looks on while giving his State of the State address in the assembly chamber in Trenton, New Jersey, January 8, 2013. Christie renewed his calls to the U.S. Congress on Tuesday to quickly pass the full $60.4 billion Superstorm Sandy relief package, saying victims in New Jersey had been short-changed. REUTERS/Carlo Allegri (UNITED STATES - Tags: POLITICS) - RTR3C83X
New Jersey Governor Chris Christie REUTERS/Carlo Allegri (UNITED STATES – Tags: POLITICS) – RTR3C83X
It’s one thing when you have something to run on. It’s quite another when you have to run away from your record. That’s the position Governor Christie finds himself in on the eve of his long-awaited announcement that he will run for president. Most candidates have a signature issue or can point to improving conditions in their state. What can Christie run on?
There’s no New Jersey economic miracle.
His attorneys argued in court that the one significant legislative achievement of his term, a state workers pension and benefits reform bill, was, in fact, unconstitutional, which will require another round of pension cuts and significantly higher health care premiums for state workers.
Property taxes continue to rise.
Funding for education has been cut.
Businesses and the very wealthy continue to enjoy the governor’s protection from tax hikes while middle class workers have seen their wages stagnate to erode further.
He created an atmosphere of fear and contempt in his administration and hired aides who shared his vengeful attitude, which resulted in the Bridgegate scandal that is still rocking the Statehouse.
But you know what? None of this Governor Christie’s fault. How do I know? Because he said so.
On the economy, Christie is taking credit for slowly improving conditions in the state, where unemployment still lags behind the national rate. What he isn’t saying is that job growth during his tenure is 48th nationally, ahead of only Mississippi and New Mexico. His reaction?
“We inherited a wrecked ship,” he said, “and we’ve now made it sea-worthy.”
Arguable, but the bigger issue is where the Governor is steering that ship. Right now it’s going in circles and is perilously close to the rocks. The truth is that after more than 5 years, Christie’s economic plan is dead in the water. The state budget chief said as much in 2013 and Christie mocked him as a fiscal Dr. Kevorkian. And thankfully, the Democratic Legislature killed his proposed tax cut. That really would have sunk the ship. Christie now wants to take his fiscal genius to a national level. For anybody making under $100,000, that would be real suicide.
His proposed national economic plan, just released, calls for the highest tax rate to be cut from 39.6% to 28%. That’s an enormous tax break for the wealthy that will redistribute more income to the upper class and require cuts to the programs that most Americans want and that many desperately need.
As for hiring the best and brightest for his administration, the governor is now saying that he can’t be held responsible for what his aides did on his behalf. Says he:
“I obviously spent time thinking about that, because it’s an obvious question,” the governor said. “But no, I really don’t think so. I think, unfortunately, there are going to be times when people that work for me do things that are completely out of character.”
“I’m accountable for what happened because I’m the governor,” he added. “But you can’t be responsible for the bad acts of some people who wind up in your employ.”
The buck, obviously, stops…there, but never here.
My Ouija Board just spelled out, “I am not a crook.”
Governor Christie has spent a good deal of time during his term in office criticizing people who don’t recognize that he’s telling us the truth on taxes, on pensions, on the role of government and, mostly, on being responsible for our future. His hypocrisy knows no bounds.
Republicans – how is it even possible for a party to always be on the wrong side of everything? How is that even possible?
After multiple deaths and even more injuries in Tuesday’s Amtrak train crash, here comes the Republicans and another attempt to cut funding to the agency.
As investigators still searched through the wreckage of the Amtrak train in Philadelphia, a political battle seethed over funding for the long-neglected rail network.
The crash of the train travelling between Washington DC to New York came just hours before politicians in the capital are due to meet to discuss a budget bill that could see funding for Amtrak cut by millions.
Supporters of Amtrak have been lobbying the House Appropriations Committee, not to reduce funding containing within a broader transportation bill. A draft of the bill would see Amtrak’s funding cut to to $1.13bn from the $1.4bn it typically receives annually, Politico reported.
On Wednesday morning, White House spokesman Josh Earnest said the government had sent a letter to the committee urging it not to cut funding to Amtrak.
“There is clearly more that can be done when we’re talking about a railway infrastructure that is decades-old,” Mr Earnest told CNN.
“If there’s an opportunity for us to make further investments in our infrastructure that would better safeguard the traveling public, then those are investments that we should make.”
Reports said that Democrats had already been planning to try and defend funding for the network. But that will likely take on a new urgency given Tuesday night’s accident.
It is a regular talking-point for Republican lawmakers to keep their base afraid, to fool their base into thinking Democrats are against them and are actively doing everything possible to crucify them and their beliefs.
But when Rep. Marsha Blackburn tried to repeat this lie again – that Christians are being persecuted here in America – she did not anticipate a follow-up question from a very inquisitive reporter.
“Can you be specific about the instances in which you feel that Christians are being persecuted?” a reporter inquires of Blackburn.
“You know, there have been several lately. There’ve. Um. I can’t give you a specific (pause) right off the cuff,” Blackburn shrugs. “I’m sorry.”
Then Blackburn smiles, turns away from the reporter, looks back toward the camera, and says, “Yeah. Thanks.”
Pamela Geller is now making out like a bandit, raking in the dough from her foolish donors because of death threats she has received from ISIS over a prophet Muhammad drawing contest she organized. When Geller came under attack from many on the left for organizing the Muhammad-drawing event in Texas last week, it was the backlash on the right that really made news.
One of the most unbelievable responses came from Fox News’ Geraldo Rivera, who implied that just watching Geller on television made him feel so dirty, he gets the urge to go take a shower!
WOW!
“She most reminds me of the Aryan Nation, KKK, racists,” Geraldo said. “I see them on television now and I feel like taking a shower.”
He continued; “If Pamela Geller, if you put ‘Jew’ in there or ‘Irish’ in there or ‘black’ in there, any other groups, she would not be given the tolerance to spew her hateful rhetoric!”
The president of the United States called out Fox News today, as one of the leading voices pushing a false narrative against poor people.
In a speech at the Catholic-Evangelical Leadership Summit on Overcoming Poverty, Mr. Obama expressed his frustration at Fox and other media outlets for constantly painting the poor and less fortunate as lazy leaches on the American Society.
“If you watch Fox News on a regular basis, it is a constant menu, they will find folks who make ME mad. I don’t know where they find them. They’re all like ‘I don’t wanna work. I just want a free Obamaphone.’ And that becomes an entire narrative that gets worked up. And very rarely do you hear an interview of a waitress, which is much more typical, who’s raising a couple of kids, and is doing everything right, but still can’t pay the bills.”
Conservative and Republican hero, Allen West, took to his website to tell the world about his recent encounter with Sharia Law at Walmart. Below is an exert of West’s nightmare.
…..
There was a young man doing the checkout and another Walmart employee came over and put up a sign, “No alcohol products in this lane.” So being the inquisitive fella I am, I used my additional set of eyes — glasses — to see the young checkout man’s name. Let me just say it was NOT “Steve.”
I pointed the sign out to Aubrey and her response was a simple question, how is it that this Muslim employee could refuse service to customers based on his religious beliefs, but Christians are being forced to participate in specific events contrary to their religious beliefs?
Boy howdy, that is one astute young lady.
Imagine that, this employee at Walmart refused to just scan a bottle or container of an alcoholic beverage — and that is acceptable. A Christian business owner declines to participate or provide service to a specific event — a gay wedding — which contradicts their faith, and the State crushes them.
…..
After West published his personal encounter with Sharia Law, his very own website editors debunked his entire story. The editor’s note said that after talking to a Walmart associate, it is Walmart’s policy that alcohol and cigarettes cannot be sold by anyone under 21. This is what the editor’s note said;
EDITOR’S UPDATE: We spoke to the Walmart store, and apparently employees under 21 years old are prohibited from selling cigarettes and alcohol.
The title of the post was alao changed from “Sharia law comes to Walmart?” It now reads, “More ominous signs of Christian persecution.”
The good folks at Liveleaks took a screenshot of the post before it was changed.
Look!
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